Crist's mile-wide, inch-deep political base

Fair-weather friends? In politics, they're more like rainy-day assassins.

And with a thundercloud named Marco Rubio lurking over Gov. Charlie Crist's bid for the U.S. Senate, the Republican political establishment is doing its best to take him out.

Crist's ex-supporters will protest that he abandoned the GOP long before the party abandoned him, and there is truth in that. But the real reason many are fleeing from Crist as if he's personally spewing Icelandic levels of volcanic ash has more to do with their own necks than the governor's head and heart.